Word: nkosi
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Lewis Nkosi...
What is missing in subtlety, however, is more than compensated for in power. Nkosi knows his strengths and utilizes them effectively. His tone is never affected or presumptuous but is always immediately understandable and often colorful and refreshingly poetic. He is writing about a world he knows first hand, as is clearly and beautifully evident in images such as those of the Zulu homeland. And the entire novel is suffused with the intensely emotional voice of a man who cares deeply about his country and who tries--and succeeds--in expressing that passion through his writing...
...ESSENTIAL point of Mating Birds is that there really is only one story in South Africa, the story of injustice and pain. Nkosi shows us the possibility of a love story in the development of a human relationship between Sibiya and Veronica. All potential for tenderness and caring, however, is crushed by the brutally repressive system of apartheid...
...condition, but is also a terrible force that wreaks havoc on all facets of normal human life. Racism penetrates to the deepest levels of emotion, transforming even love into a blind, uncontrollable desire for sexual possession and ultimately into a crime punishable by death. Sibiya's greatest hope and Nkosi's greatest goal is to free the people of South Africa from this cruel tragedy; Mating Birds is so singleminded and blunt only because the emotion is so strong...
...efforts, Lewis Nkosi has triumphed in his literary debut. The picture he paints of South African society is bleak and powerful and, in the end, convincing. The frustration and psychological suffering that apartheid imposes on all elements of life are made crushingly vivid, and the emotional impact of the unrestrained, passionate voice is compelling. Through this nightmare there remains a glimmer of hope in the freedom songs of the political prisoners, "a single powerful sound rolling and thundering, shaking the very foundations of the prison walls." It is not a practical agenda but only a vision of a possible future...